Bucharest, Romania

Our entry into Bucharest was… well, interesting. Interesting in every possible sense of the word: fascinating, frustrating, and very much a what the actual fuck kind of start.

Crossing the Friendship Bridge over the Danube set the tone. Construction work was going on, and as we looked out the bus window we saw a fight break out. A man in a van attacked one of the workers, who promptly fought back with pieces of 4×2 wood. Hilarious, in a shocking way—until we realised this was probably a decent preview of the chaos to come.

The bus then dropped us in the middle of the road (naturally), and we had a few hours to kill before checking into our accommodation. We’d been looking forward to it: a nice apart-hotel with a balcony, a proper kitchen, a big couch—basically somewhere comfortable to recharge between city explorations. And thankfully, it did deliver that in the end. But getting there? That was something else.

Bucharest gave us possibly the biggest culture shock of the whole trip. The city felt oddly soulless, the streets were tense, and the looks we got were more aggressive than welcoming—even in broad daylight. At one point, we ducked into a café to kill an hour, only to be served something that could only loosely be described as coffee (mud water would be generous), before being told abruptly that we had ten minutes to drink it and leave. A truly charming introduction.

The next day we tried again, determined to give Bucharest a fair shot. Coffee quickly became our nemesis. Romania, for reasons we may never understand, serves coffee that is both (a) disgusting, and (b) three to four times the price of any neighbouring country. The lesson was clear: our usual café-hopping would not be happening here.

Our first walk down the main boulevard to the old town didn’t help much. Loud, cramped, chaotic—though certainly not without grandeur. The architecture was impressive: enormous, imposing buildings, with communist-era facades standing beside palatial remnants of the past. But the old town itself? Not quite what we’d hoped. The cobblestones were uneven trip hazards, the streets were filthy and heavily graffitied, and the general atmosphere felt unwelcoming. The sheer number of beggars was overwhelming too—oddly, even some in shirts and ties. It began to feel like tourists were simply walking wallets.

There were a couple of highlights. The Palace of the Parliament was jaw-dropping in scale, and the National Art Museum inside the old royal palace offered genuinely stunning collections. Those moments almost redeemed things. Almost.

Unfortunately, Bucharest also delivered the worst meal of the trip. Schnitzel was meant to be a must-try dish here, so we picked a restaurant supposedly renowned for it. What arrived was a sad, dry slab of meat that might as well have been cardboard. No seasoning, no sauce, no joy. Just regret.

So, to be brutally honest: we hated Bucharest. Loud, unfriendly, overpriced, and stressful, it left us desperate to move on. Our next stop is Busteni, up in the mountains—where we’re dreaming of cooler air, hiking trails, and hopefully a much-needed change of tone.